Tensions between the United States and North Korea, which have flared from time to time through the years, are high again.

North Korea should not test “the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region,” Vice President Mike Pence warned Monday in Seoul, South Korea. Over the weekend, North Korea had tested another missile, which blew up shortly after it was launched.

Are you more concerned about the rising tensions now than in similar flare-ups of tension in the past? That’s our Question of the Week for readers.

Is this time fundamentally different, now that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has better nuclear and missile capabilities, and now that the Trump administration has shown its willingness to act militarily?

The U.S. struck a Syrian air base after the Syrian government apparently used chemical weapons against rebels, and dropped its biggest non-nuclear bomb on an ISIS-held area of Afghanistan. Those strikes could serve as a warning to North Korea that the U.S. will not back down from a confrontation. The United States has deployed a naval flotilla led by the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson to the coast of the Korean Peninsula.

Are you glad to see the new administration flex its military muscles, or do you see it as a dangerous development? Are you afraid of a full-blown war with a nuclear-armed North Korea, or do you think that the Trump administration’s approach will push North Korea to change its course away from its rapid development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles? Six-party talks and other attempts at negotiations have not deterred North Korea in the past.

Pence also said Monday that Washington was seeking security “through peaceable means, through negotiations.” That is the course that China is encouraging.

What sort of settlement and concessions should the U.S. seek from North Korea?

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